Crack the Spine - Issue 177

Crack the Spine

Literary magazine

Issue 177

Issue 177 December 30, 2015 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine

Cover Art “Maya G� by Fredric Chambers Cedric Chambers was born on June 16, 1990 he lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He is a professional photographer and a prolific painter.

Chambers primarily paints with oil paint and draws inspiration from his environment. His portfolio includes over 200 paintings in styles from photo realism to abstract expressionism. His father gave him the name Cedric so he wouldn’t have to pick a pseudonym. His grandfather was a concert violinist who played a stradivarius. His mother is a Bolivian fashion designer who let him participate in hispanic cultural festivals and parades.

CONTENTS Michael Washburn Distance

Michael Passafiume California Dreaming

Jean Ryan

Odds and Ends

Noel C. Hoffman 27

Sarah Wilkinson Dream Walker

Erren Geraud Kelly Coffeehouse Poem #88

Gloria Panzera Snowfall Hush

Michael Washburn Distance

A breeze carried the odor of seaweed as the young park rangers filed through the crowd in the outdoor auditorium to a row of chairs before the stage.

Though the venue wasn’t huge, none of the rangers felt disappointed with the turnout. Even the most earnest of them had never imagined that dozens of people here in Port Hedland could take an interest in the rangers’ efforts to protect wildlife, or in anything they did. This was just a little town on Australia’s western coast, but there were things to do at night besides watching youngsters accept awards from fat, aging community leaders. So the rangers generally felt thrilled. Only one of them, Kate Mansfield, had an odd heavy feeling in her chest.

Kate sat in the front row, so she could not see the faces of the spectators until 20 minutes in, when Don Barnett, the master of ceremonies, invited her onto the stage. She climbed the wooden steps at the right edge of the crude structure and moved before the mike, breathing heavily as she looked out at the rows of expectant pink faces beneath the stars. Don, a paunchy fellow in a blue buttondown shirt and khaki trousers, held up a shiny bronze plaque in a dark oak frame. Here was Kate’s award for five years of keeping turtles’ habitats apart from the nearly naked idiots frolicking on the beach, inspiring dozens of schoolkids with vivid accounts of how turtles live, and talking eloquently, some would say hypnotically, in documentaries about the port’s wildlife and ecology.

Whenever Don’s head turned toward Kate, people noted a kind of eagerness in

his eyes. Though this maybe wasn’t the right place to say so, Don was aware of how pretty and charming everyone found Kate Mansfield.

What Kate had dreaded for days was underway now. She’d been relatively composed when mounting the stage, but now her eyes felt a sting followed by tears. With quick moves Kate dried her eyes and rubbed her fingers together vigorously. She moved her face a few inches in front of the mike, rocked gently on her heels for a few seconds, gripped the sides of the podium. As she scanned the crowd, she felt there was really no cause to be nervous. This crowd was pretty friendly. They were lolling with their legs crossed and their arms flung over the tops of neighbors’ chairs, like folks at a poetry reading, in the cool air carrying aromas of a relaxing world.

Kate had pages with her words printed on them in a gargantuan font, but she didn’t need them, for she’d committed most of her speech to memory. She kept her eyes on the crowd as she began: “I want to thank the Preservation Authority, its donors, and the community for this honor . . . ” Inevitably she worked in a cute joke about thanking the turtles. As her eyes moved over the well-fed locals, her gaze rested briefly on someone she didn’t know but thought she might have seen before, somewhere. A man in his 40s sat near the back of the place. He had thin black hair combed artlessly forward to the middle of his forehead, and a hard rough face like the boss of a struggling plumbing company.

At least these were Kate’s impressions in the moment her eyes were on him.

The light back there was too dim, the distance too great, to be sure of much of anything. Kate wrapped up her uninspired but adequate talk to generous applause before rejoining her fellow rangers at the base of the stage.

The next speaker Don introduced was a bit of a surprise. Peter Highsmith, a tall, white-haired man whose beige suit matched the beaches and dunes, had

come out here from Broome to announce his foundation’s bestowal of a grant on the Preservation Authority for the coming fiscal year. This meant more staff, more pay, more programs, more documentaries, more of everything that made the program so wonderful. On either side of Kate, rangers leaned forward in their seats, relishing Peter’s every word, resisting urges to run up there and kiss him. For her part, Kate could practically see the words traveling toward her in a stream and dispersing before they got close enough for her to savor them.

As hard as she tried to listen, she was aware of the scrutiny of a pair of eyes in a middle-aging head behind her, as a breeze rose in the cool air.

Less than an hour later, Kate sat with a couple of fellow rangers, five mutual friends, and Peter Highsmith himself at a long table outside a bar by the shore.

The rhythms of the waves not twenty yards away helped to carry the merry conversation along. Kate spent most weekends with Jocelyn and Sarah, her nonranger friends, but was no less delighted they could be here. She’d felt such a pang of loneliness that she needed them. They praised her talk so generously she could almost believe it rose above boilerplate. Jocelyn bought a round of beers, and everyone raised a glass to Kate’s achievements. As the talk turned to Sarah’s new boyfriend, Jocelyn leaned forward a bit, narrowing her eyes. Kate appeared to be having a really difficult time with something.

“No!” Kate murmured, gazing at her draft beer.

“Kate?” Jocelyn said.

“I, uh—I’m really sorry, Joz. I thought I recognized someone, but I couldn’t remember where, so just now I decided, no, forget it, he must have been a stranger.”

“That was still a weird outburst.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“No idea who it might have been?” Jocelyn pressed.

“None.”

Jocelyn smiled.

“Fuck it. You did an amazing job tonight.”

“Really?”

“Really, hon. Look at Peter down there,” Jocelyn persisted with a nod at the head of the table.

Peter Highsmith looked almost cloyingly proud as he sat there, raising his draft beer to his lips, bantering with a pair of rangers named Oliver and Danny.

His narrow eyes and refined mien made Kate think of Patrick Stewart in the Star Trek movies. To her, this look did not fit well at all with the debauchery he was engaging in, in fact it was downright embarrassing, but Kate remembered the grant. Kate drank the rest of her cool, delicious beer. She thanked God for giving her the warmest, kindest, most nurturing friends. At this moment Kate felt up for whatever they wanted to do.

The roads were nearly empty as the three cars made their way south through the cool air of the coast, with its unmistakable odors and erratic winds. While the others in the middle car chatted, as gaily as ever, Jocelyn wondered why her friend kept gazing out the window, as if she felt guilty for having hurt something out there amid the sand and the gum trees. Kate’s manner still seemed odd. Night had come to Port Hedland, the area was alive with raucous cries, and it seemed inconceivable that anyone could willingly be absent from the joy. Jocelyn thought about the hotel to which they were heading and mulled ways to induct Kate back into the ranks of the merry. Soon the three cars swung into the dirt lot beside the white two-story building whose plain porch supported a bench and a rocking chair. Everyone followed Peter Highsmith

through the dirt, onto the path, and up the steps to the lobby, where Peter addressed the teen clerk behind the front desk rather as Himmler might have spoken to a whore on the streets of Berlin. For all his zest for environmentalism, Peter clearly didn’t take most people in Port Hedland too seriously. The mood was jubilant as the partiers followed him to the door of a suite on the ground floor. Peter vanished into the suite for a minute before reappearing with an uncorked bottle of champagne in either hand and issuing an invitation.

While most of the guests went inside, Jocelyn wanted to have words with Kate in the hall.

“This should be one of the happiest nights of your life, Kate,” Jocelyn persisted.

“It is. I assure you it is. I’ve never felt my confidence surge as it did when I was up there giving the speech, Joz. It’s like a really lame movie, where the shy girl finds her voice when she least expects it,” Kate replied.

Jocelyn smiled.

“Well, there was one point where your voice paused and your eyes quit moving, and it was like you wanted to name something or someone but you were too painfully aware of the pause and it was terrifying. It was one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen. But never mind. Let’s get you some bubbly,” Jocelyn said.

They moved into the suite, where people lolled on love chairs, wooden folding chairs, and the big couch at the wall running parallel with the hotel’s façade. Kate felt pretty excited for her friend Sarah, who sat on the couch clutching a glass cylinder with bourbon inside, staring across the room at her new boyfriend, Mark, who swilled champagne from a tall glass, laughing and

rocking gently back and forth in his chair at her remarks. Mark was handsome in a conventional way, and he grinned like any number of A-list stars. Yes, that was exactly how he struck Kate. He was one of the gorgeous people Western Australia exported to the world.

Kate took a seat on a brown chair with thick pillows. Someone handed a bottle with a translucent liquid in it to her, she raised it to her lips, and she felt a tart cool current rush through her, banishing all her staid and stale emotions, flecking the landscape of her mood with giddy impulses. Sarah made a joke about how her new boyfriend compared to her old one in terms of size, and everyone laughed as if it were the cleverest joke ever told. As Kate drank more and more, the distances in the room appeared greater and the grinning faces, even those of Sarah and Jocelyn, came to seem oddly foreign. Kate went down the hall to use the restroom, and came back to find a friend of Peter’s, a woman in her late thirties in a deep blue dress with white frills, had taken Kate’s seat.

With annoyance, Kate found a less comfortable wooden chair and resumed drinking. Now she noticed a pair of guys in chairs opposite her, near the seat she’d vacated. Nick and Rodney had hung out with Kate and her circle a few times, though neither of them were rangers. They gave people the impression that they admired the rangers even as they mocked what people call the “outdoor lifestyle,” making frequent references to Crocodile Dundee. On a few of the nights she’d hung out with them, Kate had noticed Rodney staring at her.

She didn’t find either of them particularly handsome, and moreover, Kate wanted to date mature fellows, not boys who went around in clothes associated with one or another team, made crude jokes, played lots of games online, and stiffed waitresses. Kate decided she was much too polite to tell these fellows she could have done without their attention.

Luckily, Nick and Rodney seemed really more interested in trading crude jokes with Sarah or Mark than in flirting with Kate, at least for now. Peter’s thirty-something friend, the lady who’d stolen Kate’s chair, chortled at the coarse banter, delighting in the opportunity to act like a millennial for one night of her staid existence. Kate drank some more until her awareness, her acuity, began to fade. She wanted to get enough of a buzz that she could forget about the threat of Nick and Rodney flirting with her, but above all, she wanted to enjoy herself. The little party here was fun, and maybe Peter Highsmith wasn’t the pretentious toff she’d assumed. But Jocelyn’s eyes kept finding their way back to Kate. It was as if Jocelyn knew what Kate often struggled not to acknowledge when she was at events that were meant to be fun.

Kate could deny it, but she knew the sensation well enough. Yes, it was that stale old feeling that she was frittering her time away in the little moments when you never think “I am aging,” and you certainly don’t feel any change, but your biological age is getting ready to surprise you with a new, homely reality.

The changes might first be evident only when juxtaposing a couple of photos of Kate, in her big brown hat and the rest of her ranger’s crisp attire, against a background of dusty clay and unbroken cobalt blue. Her face would be so prominent in the later picture that you’d have to notice the fissures, the loss of fineness. She had her familiar sad thoughts about what precious and fleeting things youth and beauty are. Then she thought, no, this was daft, Kate even now was one of the younger people in her circle, she still looked fresh and desirable as ever. When she got into her thirties and the changes grew impossible to prevent or deny, she could remind herself that ruggedness was a venerable Aussie trait, repeat all that nonsense about age, wisdom, character, and pour herself a whiskey.

Not many people noticed as Kate got up again and made for the door. Nick was chortling at Sarah’s latest quip. Rodney noticed, though.

“Kate,” he said, rushing up to her.

“Leave me alone.”

“Stay and have some more drinks with us.”

“Who said I’m leaving?”

“I bet you are leaving.”

“I will if you don’t back off.”

“Kate, forgive me for being direct, but it’s not like you’ve got this really full life you need to get back to, is it?”

Kate didn’t know what she resented most: Rodney’s invasive question, its tacked-on rhetorical clause, his reeking breath, or the way he leered at her with wide sallow eyes.

Or the erection he probably had.

“Insolent little prick. Let me tell you something, Rodney. You live with your parents, don’t you? I have total, absolute independence.”

“You’re lonely, Kate.”

She knew what she wanted to say now wouldn’t sound too convincing, but she said it anyway.

“Rodney. Get back over there or you’ll be picking your teeth off the rug.”

The boy retreated. Kate left the room, glided up the hall, through the front lobby, out onto the porch. The air had cooled and the waves thirty yards away were loud, plangent. She breathed deeply of the seaweed-scented air, scanning the road that wound up the coast with curves sudden or gradual. About fifty yards up the road to Kate’s right, there was a tavern with a garden that filled up every weekend. Though Kate couldn’t see anyone from where she was standing,

she could hear clinking bottles amid a babble of voices above the noise of the waves. Kate closed her eyes, breathed deeply some more, and only now did she think about why she’d come out here. It wasn’t really that she couldn’t identify what had been bothering her. She’d chosen not to make the effort.

Now she tried. Kate thought of that weird fellow who’d stared at her from the back row while she was giving her speech. She knew she’d seen him before, but the truth was so improbable, so horrifying, that she’d spent almost all night trying to dodge acknowledging it, or rather, to avoid the opportunity of doing so.

Kate knew. Oh, yes.

She’d encountered him online.

The life that Kate Mansfield led here in Port Hedland was a deeply traditional one in many ways. She loved the outdoors, she adored features of the landscape that had been around before nation-states existed, and ways of life that explorers, seafarers, hunters, trappers had pursued. At the same time, Kate was a typical millennial, who used Facebook daily. Like other users of the site, Kate received occasional friend requests from strangers, which she either accepted with good humor or, more often, dismissed. When Kate spotted that man in the audience tonight, the guy with rough skin and dark hair combed artlessly forward, the thought that began to form, before she choked it off, was No way.

No way could that be him! The him in question being one Harold Rafte of Troy, New York, who’d sent her a friend request on Facebook. Kate usually ignored requests from strangers, but in this case, she’d indulged her curiosity long enough to explore the stranger’s profile a bit. She’d discovered that he lived in Troy, had a paltry eight friends, and looked about as handsome and successful as an alcoholic trash collector. Kate had no idea how he’d ever discovered her

profile, for they had no mutual friends. Although Kate was a bit of a local celebrity, it was inconceivable to her, even in the “information age,” that anyone so far away might have heard of her.

Of course, Kate had uploaded quite a few pictures to her profile, all of which were public. It had never occurred to her that they should not be. She’d never considered the ease with which anyone, literally anyone in the world, could look up her profile and traverse seemingly infinite distances, from anywhere, from the density of bluegrass and trees in East Texas or the freezing plains of Patagonia or the babble of cell phone conversations outside the tallest towers of Pine Street, or from a study, a garage, a living room in the dingiest and least appreciated burg in Middle America, straight to the sunny patch of earth where Kate Mansfield lived and worked. Her online profile invited friends and strangers alike into Kate’s world, saying, look, here’s Kate atop a stallion, gazing out into the pale blue from beneath the visor of her broad ranger’s hat. Here’s Kate on a beach, looking sexy in her beige shorts and gray-green button-down shirt and that hat, kneeling as she makes a point about the habits of turtles to a crowd of curious kids. Here’s Kate on a remote trail, with ochre cliffs in the distance, crouching before a flower with petals of such pale purple you might take them for a relic from the 1970s. Once again Kate is wearing beige shorts that hug her trim figure, and that ubiquitous hat, which restrains but does not conceal her luscious red-blonde hair. In other pictures, you can spot Kate in one of two rows of grinning youngsters at a long wooden table decked out with draft beers in the garden of a tavern in Broome or Darwin or a village in a valley in New Zealand. Even as you gape at the beauty of this blooming lass, your distance from her is like the ocean above a submarine whose engines have died.

Kate chastised herself for these vain imaginings. Of course she’d never seen that man in the audience before tonight, even online! And of course no one in America cared about a minimally educated park ranger, at youth’s outer edge, passing her days in this most provincial of places. Even as Kate made these denials, she felt so cold and alone it was terrifying. She breathed in the coolness, looked to the coastline and beyond, and wondered how far you’d have to travel to reach a ship, plodding through the night, or the beach of a remote island between here and Malaysia.

When she returned to Peter’s suite, the two boys who fancied her, Nick and Rodney, were the only ones who followed her progress across the floor to the little wooden seat. The others were in the midst of a drinking contest. No, she realized, it was nothing so formal, they were just taking long draughts from their bottles and roaring at each other. A guest, it might have been Sarah, placed a bottle of Toohey’s in Kate’s right hand, and she began to join the revelry again.

Then to her dismay Kate noticed that those horny boys, Nick and Rodney, who had both moved to the couch, were looking at her and whispering to each other.

Boys, she thought. Here are kids who aren’t mature enough to appreciate my interests, yet they’re infatuated with me. Kate felt almost like getting up and going outside again, maybe going home. Where had Jocelyn gone? Kate took out her cell phone, flipped through text messages, but found nothing from her friend. She put the cell phone down on a table and forgot about it.

Wishing Jocelyn would reappear, Kate began to look around the room. As she did so, none other than Peter Highsmith pulled up a chair on her left and sat down. Peter’s white hair looked disheveled, and his movements weren’t as calculated as before, yet his voice was as crisp as ever. He began talking of his love for Port Hedland, of how he couldn’t bear the distance between here and

Broome. As Kate listened to the aging fellow, as she watched his flickering darting eyes, as she recalled his interaction with the clerk, she had little doubt Peter was thinking about Port Hedland’s fit, agile female park rangers, their smiles, the way their hips moved, the way their rs dissolved into hs.

Peter’s right hand did not wander, but his tone did. As he talked about the virtues of a rugged way of life, he placed increasing stress on the brave, independent, self-reliant qualities of the park rangers. The visual accompaniment to brave was a leer which made Kate imagine presenting herself naked to a stranger or near-stranger. The cries of the revelers were getting louder, but she still could not locate Jocelyn. Maybe her friend had hooked up with Oliver or Danny, or, who knew, with both of them. Kate’s other friend, Sarah, was sitting on a stool ten feet away, her back turned, engaging in some game with five randy young fellows, only two of whom Kate recognized. It was that point in the party where friends of friends have crept into the mélange.

Kate said, “Thank you so much for this privilege, Peter,” rose from her chair, and nearly fell down, for her right leg had fallen asleep and she was drunk.

“Stay and have one more drink?” Peter called.

With a shake of her head, Kate made it to the door. Upon emerging from the hotel, she found that the air had cooled even further. Not until her feet clomped on the curvy road did Kate remember she didn’t have a ride lined up. This was, perhaps, something that Kate, a ranger and an eminently practical person, might have thought of earlier. Oh, the cold, the noise of waves crashing on the shore, the unspeakable distance between here and where she needed to be!

Kate plodded along the road, the sound of the waves receding as the road curved inland, then rising with the next curve, then receding again with still

another, and she watched her breath come out like regurgitated emotions. She was walking on the dirt shoulder, staggering onto the road, overcorrecting, nearly toppling into the weeds beyond the shoulder, only now realizing how drunk she was, how remote Peter’s hotel was from where she needed to be. It would take hours of plodding along in the dark, in this state, before the lamps in the parking lot outside Kate’s complex came into view. Kate hardly knew what choice she’d had. She couldn’t very well have asked Nick or Rodney for a ride, much as they’d have loved to give her one. No, there could be no encouraging those horny boys. She ambled on, her feet kicking up miniature tornadoes on the road. Without easing her pace, Kate listened for the waves. They were as hard at work as ever, as insistent as divorcees pounding on their lawyers’ doors. Maybe Kate should not listen to anything that might distract her from her goal. The objective was for the lights of that plain, frankly squalid, but familiar complex to come into view. Everything else in the world at the moment, even dull purple flowers, was a distraction, a danger.

Such notions galvanized Kate as the lights of the car came around a curve forty yards behind her. At first, she thought, Nick and Rodney. Those horny boys!

I could swear I left those idiots far behind. Then her thoughts returned to the cold, the vastness of empty road before her. Kate watched as the Nissan moved ahead of her, slowed, then came to rest a few inches from the shoulder. Though Kate could not make out the driver’s face, he obviously wasn’t Nick or Rodney.

Without a question, without a word, Kate accepted the stranger’s offer to close the distance. She opened the back door, climbed in, planted herself on the pristine seat of a rented car, thanked the driver, talked of trifling things as the car accelerated. The head before her in the driver’s seat was that of a taciturn, even somber, middle-aged fellow who either had the luck to retain a full head of

hair, or had gifted cosmetic surgeons. Though noises emerged occasionally from that head, in response to pleasantries from Kate, it fixed on the road as if every curve required immense concentration.

For all her guardedness, her wariness of dealing with horny suitors, Kate really wanted to engage with this stranger, to fathom his unexpected kindness.

She found it hard, confoundingly hard, to get a response out of the head in front of her. It was even more so when a pair of lights appeared on the road behind this car. Kate leaned back in her seat, nervous, expectant, waiting for the car in the background to surge ahead of this one. But it did not. Its occupants seemed content to linger back there.

Bewildered, Kate rotated her gaze to the head in front of her. The driver of the rented car seemed weirdly unconcerned. His air, his manner suggested that here was a backwater with its little people, its inconsequential loves, feuds, and relationships, and he’d be fucked if he was going to get alarmed over who might or might not be following him. The car a few dozen meters behind began to surge ahead a bit, paused, sank back, then surged again.

The driver said: “Give me your cell phone.”

Kate realized she’d forgotten it in Peter’s suite. She was too shocked at the command, too flabbergasted at herself, to speak.

Now the pursuing car was coming on really fast. Kate was so drunk she barely knew how to react when the car she was in accelerated sharply. Even now, she hadn’t quite figured out why she shouldn’t be in the car with this man.

She knew she shouldn’t leap from the vehicle in any event. The lights took in abrupt curves. The driver manipulated the wheel aggressively, as if touching a woman, trying hard to bring her to climax. The Nissan moved around a bend in the road so fast Kate feared the driver would never adjust in time on the other

side. But the car didn’t go off the road. It slowed down enough for the driver to hug the curve while gauging the next one. Kate caught a glimpse of his face.

Even in her state, she knew exactly who the driver was. About twelve seconds later, Kate watched in the rear view mirror as the other car came around the same curve, swerved to avoid the fringe of gum trees at the shoulder, picked up speed. Kate thought the pursuers must surely catch up, but the Nissan surged through the dark, banked in tandem with the next curve, and was once again alone, occupying its own clause within an endless tortuous sentence.

Just as Kate opened her mouth to plead with the driver, he did something that astonished her. Instead of continuing up the road, more or less in keeping with the curve of the coast, the driver slowed down just enough to turn right onto a dirt road, a trail really, running perpendicular to the coast. The Nissan progressed along the trail for about six seconds before the driver turned suddenly again, left this time, onto another trail leading to a dirt lot behind a long faded red building with a roof of rusting corrugated tin. Kate recognized the building. It was a disused ranger station. As soon as the car stopped, the lights went off. The darkened rectangle sat silently with its cargo of two strangers from opposite sides of the world. Thirty yards away, the pursuing car passed by. Kate thought that Nick and Rodney were like residents of a street who have passed by a store’s awning innumerable times without reading the characters on it. It never occurred to them that a hiding place, or the route to one, had been in their path.

Harold waited a full ten minutes before putting the Nissan back in drive. Kate guessed he was gloating because someone from Troy, New York, knew features of the landscape that locals apparently didn’t. Even now he had barely exchanged a word with Kate.

Kate said: “Thank you for the ride, sir. Y-you can let me out here.”

The head neither moved nor produced sounds.

“Please. Please, sir.”

The head was stolid sentinel in the near-total dark.

Then, as the car began to move back onto the trail leading toward the coastal road, Harold finally spoke.

“Kate. Don’t try to get out and run. I’ll kill you.”

“I won’t, sir. I promise I won’t. I just don’t want to, you know, get hurt or anything.”

“Give me your cell phone, Kate,” he commanded.

“If I had one I would have used it. I mean—I don’t have one,” she fumbled.

“Everyone your age does.”

“I don’t have it with me! Please don’t hurt me. I don’t know what I may have done—” “Shut up, Kate. If you talk again other than in response to what I say, I’ll kill you.”

Soon the car was roughly parallel with the coast again. There came three big curves, and a score of minor ones, before the car turned right onto another trail.

This time its course was less pat. It swerved repeatedly, onto new trails, each of which had subsidiary routes wending off toward distant points under the stars.

Kate dared only breathe. Harold knew exactly what he was up to. He guided the Nissan over the rises and depressions, alert to every quirk of the dark landscape, until the vehicle emerged onto a fairly straight road. Fifty yards up ahead, there stood a disused wooden shed.

“The relay station,” Harold said.

“Excuse me?” Kate whispered.

“You’re so desirable, Kate. But I’ll keep you here until you’re old and no one wants you. You’ll see a mirror once every few months, and you’ll know how much your looks are changing while you’re confined here. You’ll go from age to age to age!”

Harold laughed so hard he might have been watching a comic onstage.

In desperation Kate opened the door to her right, got out, and ran, only to find out how well Harold had prepared for just this development. She heard a heavy but rapid tattoo of feet behind her, felt a hand slide across her waist, then a pad that reeked of a powerful agent was moving across her mouth. All the world, all sense and awareness, took off like a skittish bird. Harold dragged his captive into the shed, opened a trapdoor, carried her down into the cellar, lashed her to a beam, tied a dirty purple rag around her mouth, walked outside, and sealed the door with a padlock.

Detectives later filled in voracious reporters on what Kate did not get to witness. They related how the abductor drove back to the coast, pursued the winding road for a few minutes, and turned onto a road leading to a tavern half a mile inland. This establishment enjoyed the oxymoronic popularity of a place people loved for being relatively unknown. The one-story building was squat and uninspiring, but inside, the leers of the Ned Kelly Gang in pictures on the walls looked at once psychotic and comfortingly familiar. The clientele included Pilbara miners, surfer dudes, pig shooters, corporate lawyers in town to discuss mergers of mining, processing, and exporting operations, kids who’d just attained the legal drinking age.

Harold came in, took a seat at a round table, and waited for the young waitress to come so he could order a glass of Toohey’s. He felt a twinge of embarrassment at sitting alone at a table meant for four, but then, moments

like this one littered Harold Rafte’s life. Luckily, most people here weren’t paying attention to him. At the bar, a hunter/trapper with a tough physique, wearing boots, jeans, and a checkered red and black shirt, exchanged words with a 45-year-old dark-haired fellow with droopy jowls, whom Harold guessed was the owner. There were a few couples at booths along the wall behind Harold, and a smattering of kids danced by the jukebox at the back.

The waitress came. She was a brunette with a figure that was full without quite being plump. Her breasts pressed against the olive green shirt just barely contained by the band of her pale jeans. The ends of her black hair perched on her shoulders, and her grin, though faintly guarded, conveyed the possibility of nurturance and pleasure inside a cozy warm place. When Harold encountered that grin, and his eyes met hers, quite different possibilities occurred to him. He knew that somewhere out there under the big full moon was this young woman’s boyfriend. Together they must be outwardly quite nice, perhaps they conformed to certain Aussie stereotypes, “G’day mate” and all that, but if you were a lonely person and you grew too curious about the couple’s relationship, you’d see just how quickly the cuteness and jokes could die off. They were right, they were proper, and their time together was much too valuable for them to waste on some miserable fellow who stood looking in from the edges of their existence, like a masturbator peering into a women’s dorm.

Harold quickly got to work on his Toohey’s, glancing around at the drinkers, the couples, and the kids, thinking Fuck this place. I can hold a soul in captivity for years here but that doesn’t mean I have to be fond of it.

Just then, Nick and Rodney walked in. They’d done an inspection of all the cars in the lot outside, and they had a few questions on their minds. Whether Harold saw them upon their entrance is not clear. Soon he had no choice but to

notice the two boys who’d grown so infatuated with Kate. They walked aggressively up to his table, in search of an audience with the lucky stud who’d enticed her. Harold’s tired, aging face rotated upward, in the direction of these guys who were barely out of their teens yet could act boldly toward an adult, and talk boldly too.

“Evening, mate. We’re wonderin’ if that’s your Nissan in the parking lot,” Nick demanded.

“I’m sure you have an excellent reason for asking,” Harold replied.

Rodney looked at Nick.

“It’s his car, all right.”

“Are you going to tell me what your question’s about?” Harold demanded.

“We was thinkin’ maybe you were hitting on a woman we hang out with. You didn’t give a ride to Kate Mansfield this evenin’, did you?” Rodney pressed.

“No, I didn’t.”

“No?” “I said no! And anyway, what if I did? Do you two own the bitch?” Harold seethed.

Again the boys looked at each other uneasily.

“It’d be nice if you didn’t call her a bitch, mate. You’re not even from ’round here, and you’re talking that way about our friend.”

“What’s she to you, boys? Other than a hole to stick yourself in.”

“What’s she to you?”

“Maybe you both want to fuck off.”

“Maybe you want to come outside with us,” Nick said.

“What’s wrong with right here?” Harold demanded.

Harold stood up. People all over the tavern began to take notice. The middleaged bartender had witnessed so many scenes, so many incidents at the outer fringes of civilized life. What was this? His acquaintance, the burly hunter and trapper, turned with a look no one could fathom toward the center of the room.

It was as if the two boys realized how much bigger and sturdier Harold was than either of them, now that he stood. Nick withdrew a pocket knife from the back pocket of his jeans and flipped the blade. His actions gave Harold an opportunity to turn Crocodile Dundee’s famous line, “That’s not a knife—that’s a knife,” against an Aussie, had he been clever enough. For Harold had, in his right front pocket, a long, thin Australian commando knife that he’d ordered online. In a second he had it out. In the next few seconds, he thrust the knife five inches into Nick’s pale slender throat and began jerking the blade back and forth furiously. The jerks released a spray that might have temporarily blinded Harold if he’d stood still. With a cry, Rodney grabbed Harold’s right arm and tried to hold it in place. This was a mistake. Though Harold could no longer move the blade from side to side, he was able to yank it out with a forceful step backward. His hairy, soaked forearm slid between Rodney’s clenched fingers. In a movement too fast for Rodney to see it, he slit Rodney’s nose. The teen fell to the floor with a cry.

Now the hunter and trapper leapt off his seat at the bar and charged the interloper from America. Harold thought he could handle this new danger but he had little idea of the speed or strength of an outdoorsman who’d spent much of his life bending and lifting. The embittered, lonely man who’d imagined nothing could ever shock him found himself reeling and gasping as the hunter’s grip tightened around his throat. The hunter kept moving, pushing Harold until his back collided with the jukebox. With a mighty butt to the forehead, the

hunter drove Harold’s head backward, right through the jukebox’s glass case.

They struggled. When Harold jerked his head forehead, blood dribbling into his eyes, bits of glass moved with it, lodged in the scars where the hair transplant doctors back where Harold came from had dug for tissue. Now that shock had passed, Harold was able to use the commando knife a bit more competently. He got it up and thrust it three inches into the hunter’s left ribcage, yanked it out, and thrust it again, a bit further to the right. Nearly simultaneously, the hunter got both hands up to Harold’s face, his thumbs reached Harold’s eyes, and they pushed until only the bases of the thumbs were visible. It was the most anticlimactic moment imaginable for Harold, who’d found Kate and gotten close to her, only to separate himself again on the assumption that the distance was temporary. Had Kate been conscious, in the shed more than 500 yards away, she would have heard his screams.

But Harold did not die. Nor did Rodney. When the police showed up at the tavern, the teen told them all about this night.

Even so, it was not until close to ten in the morning when they clipped the lock on the shed’s door and discovered the captive inside, who would have choked on her vomit had the rag around her mouth been just marginally tighter. Peter Highsmith had heard about the goings-on and had put off his departure for Broome in order to join the police as they canvassed the area. So he was there when they brought her out of the shed, into the fierce light, and he was able to offer reassurances with his usual urbanity. As she stood there under the aggressive, faintly intimidating mid-morning sun, Kate thought of how her face must look to the police and reporters. She wore no make-up, she had flecks of drying puke on her lips, and she had not felt young in years. The awareness of the temporal distances before her, the thought of how she would

look at points along the way, nearly made her want to return the shed. But that wouldn’t do, now, would it, in the presence of the fawning reporters and Peter Highsmith, who seemed genuinely to care about her and to find her beautiful.

“There, there,” Peter began.

“I’m fine,” Kate murmured.

“Now, now. You don’t have to say just what’s expected of you. Everyone’s in awe of your courage,” Peter told her.

“Really. I’m fine,” she said with something close to annoyance.

Michael Passafiume California Dreaming

House creaks with every gust of wind; blinds all drawn despite the sun having sent notice of foreclosure.

Each day brings rain but only to the gravel driveway.

Watering can in hand, I stopped mid-stream at the flower patch upon noticing how the peonies and daisies — colors lush, radiant — how their stems had intertwined and formed a misshapen hand giving me the finger.

And then this evening I walk into the mud room to feed dinner to the cat and dog and it was like I’d just interrupted a private conversation; Jeb was quick to grab a nearby bone and wag his tail, Molly though — she give me

this steely look, I’m telling you cinched up my nutsack but good.

Your sister Judy and her newest husband Roy stopped by over the weekend.

Roy’s a good egg — he sees something needs doin’ he don’t ask, just does it.

But the other day he grumbles a Hello, grabs a beer from the fridge and parks himself in front of the TV — ‘cept he don’t bother to turn the damn thing on, just sits there staring at his reflection.

Meantime, Judy’s got my arm, pulling me outside toward the tool shed, saying Listen. Listen. Listen.

I told you and Roy I’d return the chainsaw whenever.

Judy cocks her head, mouth slack like I was just speaking in tongues; she points an arm at the willow tree’s tire swing and says,

Tricia said you used to bleach your hair blond when you was in college. I told that to Roy and he said it was gay.

Is that why he—?

My husband wants to try an orgy.

And it was one time I bleached my hair.

I talked him down to a threesome.

And people wonder why I’m on my fifth marriage.

Then she’s straightening my collar and I’m making venison stew on Thursday; you should come over.

I’ve gotten used to you not being around.

But then there are days, feels like the world used my head to turn left and kept on turnin’.

The Petersons made another offer on the house. I’m thinkin’ I just might take it, rent a place somewhere near the beach in California.

You think it’d be possible to rig a swing up on a palm tree or a sequoia?

Countless hours you logged under our willow.

Toward the end there we had our own sign language, me nodding my head Everything okay? you nodding back Just contemplatin’.

Some days I still see you sittin’ in that swing; I swear, I do.

Jean Ryan

Odds and Ends

On the last morning of her life Connie Zimmermann opened her mailbox and pulled out a fistful of ads. An oil change and rotation special at Big O, a timeshare offer from the Disney Vacation Club, a fried chicken special at the Bonfire Grill, an URGENT notice from Greenpeace, and a pork chop and rib sale at Schmick’s Market.

What sad things mailboxes had become, Connie thought, as she made her way back to the house. They used to hold intrigue, the sort of mail you waited for: handwritten letters you read sitting down, news that made you smile, news that buckled your knees. Now your mail had nothing to do with you. Now you could be anybody.

Not that her mailbox was entirely useless. A few weeks earlier Connie had opened a notice from Prudential and wound up ordering long-term care insurance for both she and Wayne. Seventy percent of the population, the letter stated, would need extended care. And it was something you had to jump on early, while you could still afford the premiums—while insurers were still offering them: many companies, spooked by rising costs, were dropping out.

Not so long ago, she would have tossed the letter in the trash, but this was the sort of information that kept her awake now. She was fifty-seven, Wayne was sixty; it was time to pay attention, time to stop assuming they were exempt from ill winds. There had been no point in discussing the matter with Wayne, god love him—she was the one in charge of their safety. Connie did not hold this against her husband, did not even regard it as a shortcoming. She and

Wayne flowed down separate channels, filling the common pond of their marriage. Wayne’s dreamy ways had been vexing at times but never a real problem. So far.

Was it her imagination or was Wayne becoming more distracted? Much of what she said to him lately he either forgot or never heard. She did not of course expect him to absorb everything—they’d been side by side for thirtyseven years—but sometimes when he slipped away, left their shared life for another, Connie grew frightened. She did not know where he went, and even though he was back soon enough, in a blink or two, she could not help thinking about his mother’s demise. Ida had suffered from Alzheimer’s for too many years before it killed her, and Connie did not think she was strong enough to lose her husband that way. Fortunately Wayne’s father died just before Ida got really bad, before she started screaming obscenities at the dinner table and making passes at her own son. There was probably nothing wrong with Wayne, but Connie felt better having those insurance policies in place.

The walkway from the house to the mailbox was pointlessly long, and Connie could feel the sun burning her scalp. Great fluffy clouds were building in the west, thunderheads in the making. Weather was seldom a surprise in Kearney; you could see it coming from all directions, giving you time to run for cover.

Homes, not looking for any trouble, were low to the ground and close together.

Yards were unadorned, with lawns that tended to peter out before reaching the street. Trees were tough and oddly shaped—the weather turned them feral.

Still, Connie liked living here, not so much for what the town offered as for what it didn’t: traffic, crime, crowds. She and Wayne had moved to Kearney from Omaha six years before, when an etcher at the Worley Monument Company died, leaving the job open. After nearly three decades at J.F. Bloom,

where he had learned his craft, Wayne was ready for a change and Worley was happy to hire him. Wayne was one of the best, everybody said so. It wasn’t just his craftsmanship, it was the way he worked with people, steered them toward just the right words and pictures. There was nothing stuffy about headstones anymore: if your hubby loved gambling, you could have his memorial etched with dice and cards; you could even arrange for an image of his grinning face.

Wayne believed in headstones, understood that people needed them more than they anticipated. The world could be spinning apart, splitting open, but these markers, made of granite or bronze or Georgia marble, stayed in place, held their value. One time when she and Wayne were walking through Forest Lawn in Omaha, studying the headstones he had etched—elaborate, funny, heartbreaking—they stopped before a child’s memorial: Kaylin Eve Courange, June 2007 to July 2008. Wayne had etched the baby’s handprints on the left, her footprints on the right. Hushed, Connie cast her gaze over the legion of headstones rising from the grass, each one waiting for a passerby, each one whispering the same two words: Remember Me. Connie shut the door against the heat and headed down the hall to the kitchen. She had washed the breakfast dishes, wiped the counters and swept the floor, leaving this room as tidy as the others. Messy homes confounded her; she could not fathom people who gave up their only stronghold. Dropping the mail into the trash can under the sink, she paused a couple seconds over the Bonfire Grill special. The photo was fetching: three pieces of golden chicken next to fluffy mound of mashed potatoes and a biscuit dripping with butter. No. She had lost thirteen pounds by not eating this kind of food, and she had another seventeen pounds to go. She did not want to wind up with diabetes, which is where she was headed, according to her doctor. For the past couple

months she’d been preparing low-fat meals and eschewing dessert, a regimen that benefitted Wayne as well—lean as he was, his cholesterol was high. Now and then Connie would come across bakery receipts in her husband’s Subaru, but she kept quiet, believing that marriage was an alliance, not a stranglehold, and you had to allow for a few glazed donuts.

On the kitchen table were the items she was taking with her: a stack of old towels for the animal shelter, a pair of eyeglasses in need of a new nose pad, and a list of items Wayne wanted from Ace Hardware. Connie took one more satisfied look around her kitchen, admiring the crisp yellow curtains and cheerful orange countertops, then lifted the receiver from the wall phone and dialed Bernie.

“Hello?”

“Good morning,” said Connie. “It’s me. You about ready to head out?”

“Sure,” Bernie. “Sooner the better. I’m watching the news, that movie theater shooting. Horrible.”

“Yes, it was,” said Connie, who had heard more than enough about the maniac in Colorado—news that bad was hard to avoid. Wayne still read the Kearney Hub each morning, while Connie did not, depending on her husband to apprise her of any pertinent local events. She had once been able to accommodate the news, however disturbing, but age seemed to be thinning her nerves, along with her hair and skin. Danger was imminent, she knew this, could take on no more trouble.

“I have a couple stops before Ace—is that okay?”

“Sure!” said Bernie, who had to be the most obliging person Connie knew, a quality that made it easy to do her favors: Bernie didn’t drive. This had not been a problem when Bernie’s husband was alive, and as far as Connie was

concerned, it was not a problem now. Bernie did have two children, daughters, but they both lived out of state, and one of them, Stephanie, was useless anyway, only visiting when she needed money. Hard to believe that such a shiftless, black-hearted girl came from a mother like Bernie, but that was parenthood: you had no idea what you were unleashing. Connie and Wayne had been fortunate, winding up with David; quietly and in private, they still remarked on it. They had wanted another child, but Connie miscarried. Perhaps the baby was unwell, or would be; in any case they did not try again. They had used up their luck, or so it seemed.

Doug, Bernie’s husband, had died the previous winter, just two months after he was diagnosed. He started having dizzy spells, which Bernie thought had something to do with his ears or his bad sinuses. What he had was brain cancer, the sort that spreads like ink and for which there is no vocabulary. It did not matter what questions Bernie asked the doctors: the answer was no.

The four of them—Wayne and Connie, Doug and Bernie—had been close.

They used to eat dinner together on Friday evenings, alternating houses and menus, playing cards or Yahtzee afterwards. Doug’s death was a collective blow absorbed individually. For several weeks after his funeral, Bernie skirted any mention of her husband, avoiding him like a closed door, but as the weeks went on, she began to make allowances. “Doug would have loved that,” she would say of a new recipe, or, “Doug always said the mayor was a fool.” Not long after that she would cite his shortcomings, rolling her eyes in mock exasperation: “That man drove me crazy—had to switch on every light in the house.” Grief turned some people into dry wells, but Bernie, who found little in life to argue with, made her peace with death as well and so reclaimed her husband. Connie admired Bernie and had often pondered her irrepressible cheer, deciding it was

not a quality you could adopt but one you were favored with, like keen vision or a strong heart.

Bernie lived just four houses down from Wayne and Connie and was waiting at her mailbox when Connie pulled up. As always, she greeted Connie with a big smile, then slid neatly into the car, nimble for a woman her size and age. With her steadfast pageboy hairstyle and stout figure, Bernie reminded Connie of a Campbell Soup Kid, and indeed she looked younger than her sixty-five years, which was one advantage of carrying extra weight—it smoothed out the wrinkles. Connie thought her own face looked older since she’d started the new diet, though Wayne said that was nonsense.

“I love that outfit,” said Connie. She and Bernie had gone to Sears the week before and Bernie was wearing the items she bought: white shorts and a yellow top that exposed a generous portion of her slack freckled breasts. That she was no longer young and firm did not seem to concern Bernie, as if age were a law she chose to ignore.

“Thank you,” Bernie said. “You look nice too. That’s a good color on you,” she added, pointing to Connie’s blouse.

Who didn’t look better in pink, Connie thought, which is why she had three pink blouses and a pink dress, even a pink bathrobe: pink was a serviceable color. While Connie liked to look her best, she gave little consideration to her attire and seldom bought new garments. There was a time when clothes shopping was a thrill, when a new dress could make her giddy, but those feelings had subsided, and any purchases she made now were only to replace something frayed or stained, bringing her the same satisfaction she might get from new shelf liner. Which was fine. Connie didn’t mind being past the age when clothes were lures and each day was burdened with high expectation.

“It’s a hot one,” said Bernie, buckling up. “Looks like we’re going to get some storms.”

“I think you’re right.” Connie eyed the treetops, which had begun to sway as if in warning; the solid trunks looked ready, defiant.

Driving down the wide open streets of Kearney still gave her pleasure. Aside from the friends she and Wayne had left behind and that perfect kitchen with its big pantry, there was little she missed about living in Omaha. Both she and Wayne had grown up in Broken Bow, and Connie was glad of that, thankful to have been raised in a cozy community where people looked out for each other, but she was ready to leave when Wayne started working at the monument company. People in Broken Bow knew everything there was to know about her, or thought they did, and Connie wanted to be someone else: someone daring, or kinder, or smarter, someone at least mysterious. And then there was the massive feedlot just south of town where thousands of cows were fattened for slaughter. As a child, happily immune to worlds outside her own, Connie had not considered the cattle, had not even minded the odor that soaked the town on hot summer days. It wasn’t until she was out of high school that images of those animals, their bright panicked eyes, began to take root in her, to become a chronic affliction. She stopped eating beef, hoping that a clear conscience would save her, but her tiny pledge made no difference. The cows were still there, and all she could do was leave them behind. Opportunity for Wayne, escape for Connie, Omaha rescued them both; thirty years later Kearney did the same.

“Where to first?” Bernie asked.

“The animal shelter. I’m dropping off some old towels.”

“What a good idea,” said Bernie, slapping her thighs. “I should do that. I have a couple blankets I don’t need.”

Connie looked over. “Do you want me to turn back?”

“Oh no. It’s going to take me a while to find them.” This was true. The closets in Bernie’s house were overflowing with the paraphernalia she used to make Christmas decor: Styrofoam balls, squares of red velvet, sequins, rickrack, gold cords, miniature nativity scenes, tiny sleighs and mangers. Bernie fashioned these whimsical ornaments all year long and sold them to friends and local gifts shops, then put her earnings in an IRA. Clever gal, that Bernie. She’d worked in cash management at First National and was good with her money; it probably wasn’t by chance that Doug had carried such a sizeable life insurance policy.

They were on Route 30 now, heading west. Just above the pale horizon, the clouds had massed into a huge gray slab from which sleeves of rain emptied onto fields and towns. A plastic bag whipped across the road and plastered itself against a church sign: “Today’s To Do List…Thank God.” Fast food cups skittered by, followed by a wheeling paper plate. To the left, a lone dog trotted down the middle of the sidewalk.

“Wonder where he’s going,” said Bernie. “I don’t see the owner.”

“We’re almost at the shelter,” said Connie. “Let’s see if we can get him in the car.” She put on her turn signal and pulled over, but when she opened the car door, the dog gave a worried look over its shoulder and broke into a sprint.

Connie shook her head and slid back behind the wheel. “Let’s tell the folks at the shelter. Maybe they can send someone out.”

“Oh I’m sure they can. Poor little guy.”

Connie drove on. By the time they pulled into the shelter the sun was gone and the sky had turned a yellowish-gray. She should probably skip Lind’s Optical, but her old glasses were giving her headaches, and the store wasn’t far.

“You coming in?” she asked, lifting the pile of towels from the back seat.

Bernie shook her head. “I’d better not. You know how that goes.” And yes, Connie did. Bernie had adopted three cats from this shelter and was feeding a stray. Connie had brought home dogs, two on the same day, a black lab and a pit bull mix. Dick and Jane. They were adults at the time of adoption and so their ages could only be estimated, but Dick, the lab, was clearly older than Jane. His face had gone gray and he walked with effort. The dogs kept continual watch over each other, monitoring subtle changes of mood and responding with a lift of the head, a tentative tail wag. After Dick, there would be another dog, there would have to be, on account of Jane.

The girl behind the desk regarded Connie without interest, her thumbs poised over her cell phone. Connie described the dog, some sort of terrier, she thought, with light brown fur. “Can you send someone out? It can’t be far—I just saw it.”

The girl shrugged. “Maybe Louis. When he gets back from lunch.”

“When will he be back?”

“I don’t know,” the girl sighed. “Not long. We only get a half hour.” From the back rooms came the howl of a dog, a plaintive, pointless note. Other dogs, roused to hope, began to bark.

“I tried to get him in the car,” Connie said, “but he was scared.” She placed the bundle of towels on the counter. “Anyway, I know you can always use these.”

The girl frowned at the towels. “Yeah, thanks. We have a lot of them already, but whatever.” She turned back to her phone. Her round face was raging with pimples; even without them she would not be attractive. Connie understood her grudge against life, but this place was too fragile for rancor.

“You need to be nice,” Connie said, “If you can’t make the effort you should quit.” The girl looked up, stunned, and Connie walked out. She would never

have spoken up like that when she was younger, and she was pleased with herself. People said that age took away your inhibitions, but Connie thought it took away your blinders, made you see how many things depended on you.

“They’ll send someone out to look for the dog,” Connie told Bernie, getting back behind the wheel. “Supposedly.”

“I hope so,” said Bernie, frowning with concern. “How are Dick and Jane, by the way?”

“Fine. We’ve had to up Dick’s Cosequin, but he’s doing pretty well. That stuff is amazing—I don’t think he’d be walking without it.” Connie pulled onto the main road and got behind a vintage Oldsmobile traveling well below the speed limit. At each intersection the car slowed to a crawl, the driver apparently not trusting the traffic lights.

“For the love of Pete,” Connie murmured, stepping on the brake again. “Of all days.”

“Maybe they’re having car trouble,” Bernie offered.

Connie laughed. “I’d say so.”

Finally the driver signaled a turn, and the Oldsmobile swung wide to the left.

Connie could see the driver now, a tiny white-haired woman, and she felt bad for laughing. She pictured herself at eighty-five: muddled, half deaf, peering through clouds of cataracts. And that’s if she were lucky, not wheelchair-bound or worse.

The sky was darker now and more bits of trash whirled across the road. A sheet of newspaper, caught on a light post, shivered in the wind. Just as they drove past Dollar General, a large black O fell from the yellow sign and bounced down the sidewalk.

“Golly,” Bernie murmured. “That could have hit somebody.”

Connie accelerated, drove as fast as she dared: five miles over the speed limit. Seven miles was the cut-off, that’s what Wayne had told her; the police didn’t bother with anything under that.

Connie glanced over at Bernie. “I have to pop into Lind’s Optical. You okay with that?”

“Sure, honey, whatever you need to do.” Bernie glanced out window, then turned back to Connie. “What do you hear from David these days?”

David was an anesthesiologist. He worked at Scripps Health and lived in San Diego, which is where he wanted his parents to move when Wayne retired.

“The weather’s perfect,” he told them, “year round. No more shoveling snow, Dad. No more black ice.” Naturally, Connie wanted to be near her son, but she wasn’t at all sure about California with its earthquakes and high taxes and long naked coastline. She liked living in the middle of the country, no jagged edges, just wide open land farther than she could see, farther than she could imagine.

And she had come from this land, was a measure of it. Maybe it was foolish to think this, but Connie wondered if, like plants, people did best in the place they were born in, if the air and soil of Nebraska were nourishments she would falter without. Maybe she was just afraid of change.

Their son, their only child, a doctor, an achievement she and Wayne had little to do with, having determined early on to be tolerant parents, to accept middling grades and modest athletic performances so that David would be spared the humiliation Wayne had suffered. Connie well remembered Wayne’s father, Karl Zimmermann, his narrow eyes and near constant scowl, his coarse brown hair sticking straight up. Even when he got sick and Wayne was over there every day helping out, he could not find a tender word to say, just sat on his porch and glared at the world.

“We just spoke with him yesterday,” Connie said, smiling. “He’s good. He’s fine. Oh, get this—he and Jamie are getting married.” Jamie was a dermatologist; she and David had been living together for nearly three years, sharing a condo near the hospital.

“Oh my,” said Bernie. “That’s wonderful. Are they having a baby?”

“That’s what I asked. No, they’re not.” They were almost at the mall. Connie switched on her signal and pulled into the left turn lane. “I don’t think they’re going to have kids—where would they find the time?”

Bernie nodded. “Two doctors. Isn’t that something?”

When he was in residency in Omaha, Connie asked her son why he wanted to be an anesthesiologist, why that instead of, say, a cardiologist or a pediatrician, and he said he liked the idea of taking care of people, keeping them safe, while other doctors did their work. Not until David starting working at Scripps, holding his patients in that eerie, unassailable stasis—Connie saw it as a deep red labyrinth—did she began to apprehend the risk involved, the reason for his stratospheric insurance premiums. What a brave man her son was! Connie had undergone general anesthesia just once, when she had her varicose veins stripped. Excited at the prospect of normal-looking legs, she had not been apprehensive about the surgery. It was the consent form she had to sign the day before that gave her pause. Dying itself did not scare her—everyone died—but Connie wanted to be present for her death, to feel herself slipping from this world into the next. She wanted that grand surprise, saw it as part of the bargain.

There weren’t many people at the mall, and Connie was able to get a parking space right in front of the optical store. “Be right back,” she said.

Bernie smiled pleasantly. “Take your time. I’m going to text Brenda.” Brenda was Bernie’s other daughter, the good one, the one with four children and Bernie’s pretty blue eyes.

Dominique, the woman who did the eyeglass repairs, came out of an office in the back. She was a wiry woman with short black hair and dark skin. Darker freckles of varying size spotted her nose and cheekbones. As always, she nodded and beamed at Connie, her wide white smile overtaking her face. When Connie first met Dominique she assumed the woman was uncommonly friendly, but when she smiled back and said it was nice meeting her, Dominique pointed a finger at her mouth and mouthed the words, can’t talk. Laryngitis, Connie concluded, or a recent surgical procedure, but this was not the case. One of the sales gals let Connie know that Dominique was a mute, and Connie realized that the nodding and beaming was how she communicated. Having no voice, she presented a smile, a peace offering, the world’s first language. Connie thought it was a sweet way to be, and she wanted to share these feelings with Dominique but did not know how.

The sky looked odd when Connie came out of the store, a charcoal mass from which hung lighter lobe-shaped clouds, rows and rows of them. They had a name, Connie was sure of this, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She got back into the car and pointed up. “What are those called?”

Bernie peered through the windshield, grimaced. “Storm clouds.”

“Ace and then home,” said Connie. “Hopefully we’ll miss the worst of it.”

“They say we’re going to have a snowy winter,” Bernie remarked.

“Then I’m glad I’m buying a new snow shovel.” That was on the list. Their old shovel had snapped in two and Wayne wanted to make sure they replaced it

before winter. He also wanted weather-stripping and a back-up roll of duct tape. Bernie needed a sink stopper and another bird feeder.

“Well, at least you’ll get a little break in November, you lucky so and so,” said Bernie with a wink. “That was so thoughtful of David.”

Connie’s face softened at the sound of her son’s name. “Yes it was.”

As an anniversary present, David was sending Wayne and Connie to Maui, a gift that included their stay at the Hilton, along with a luau and a helicopter tour. Connie was looking forward to this, having read the brochures and scrolled through online pictures. Paradise, that’s what everyone called it. Palm trees, pink sand beaches, wild orchids; the islanders spoke English, and you didn’t have to worry about parasites or foreign currency. (David had actually given them a choice. Knowing that Wayne had a robust interest in his forbears, David had also offered them a trip to the Mosel Valley in Germany. Wayne said either option would be fine with him, so Connie, picturing gloomy castles, heavy foods and people she could not talk to, made the decision.)

A few minutes later Connie and Bernie pulled into the parking lot at Ace Hardware. This time there were no available spaces in front of the store, so they parked a short distance away. As they were walking past a green Volkswagen, Connie noticed a woman with long blonde hair in the passenger seat. Her hands were covering her face, her shoulders were heaving. Connie gaped, looked away. How awful it was to see a stranger crying. The woman’s business was her own, but walking past her felt wrong, like leaving the scene of an accident.

“That woman was crying.” Connie said.

Bernie looked around. “What woman?”

Connie tilted her head toward the car. “The one in the Volkswagen.”

Bernie peered behind them, shook her head. “Poor soul. You never know, do you?”

“No,” said Connie. “You don’t.” Sickness, maybe. Or a broken heart. Maybe something too awful to speak of.

“I know just where I’m going,” Bernie said as they entered the store. “Meet you at the front.” Familiar with the store’s layout, it did not take the women long to locate what they needed, and in just a few minutes, they were back outside, bags in hand. In her other hand Connie held the new snow shovel like a scepter, its wide flat surface rising above her head.

“Darn,” said Connie. “Too late.” The rain had begun, fat drops exploding on the pavement, pelting their heads and faces. The air was dense, pungent with asphalt and ozone.

Connie looked at Bernie, at her faultless hair, her flimsy sandals. “You stay here. I’ll get the car.” Bernie started to protest, but Connie was already gone, hurrying across the parking lot, her shovel jerking wildly.

Bernie never saw the lightning; her phone chimed with a new text from Brenda just seconds before the ground stroke hit. She did hear the terrible crack of thunder, and then she saw Connie, sprawled in the lot.

Bernie would not remember dropping her bag, running to her friend, would not remember falling to her knees and taking Connie’s hand in hers, would not remember the deepening puddle she was kneeling in. What she would remember was the rain pattering Connie’s face, her calm expression, her knowing eyes, which blinked several times before they stayed open. For the rest of her days, Bernie would remember Connie’s arm rising, her finger pointing to something Bernie couldn’t see, and the last words she uttered: “There,” Connie said, “there.”

People would blame it on the snow shovel, would claim that lightning struck the shovel and killed Connie Zimmermann in an instant. This would not be true.

The mighty bolt that felled Connie ignored the tiny shovel and detonated on the earth itself, scorching the air and sending its jagged volts sixty feet in all directions. The currents that hit Connie traveled up one leg and down the other, knocking her flat and halting her heart. The snow shovel was thrown three yards; the hand that held it was not harmed—there had been no time for flesh to burn. The only marks on Connie’s body were just below the skin, red rivers of burst blood vessels on her legs and torso that looked, strangely enough, like bolts of lightning.

The odds of being killed by lightning are 300,000 to one. Though Connie didn’t know this statistic, she would not have been surprised to learn that she was the one. Somebody had to be the one, and wasn’t she somebody?

She could not have said what hit her, was not even sure that she’d been hit.

There was only a blinding brightness, and then, slowly, a darkness that fell in velvet folds all around her, and she was somehow moving through this soft dark toward a small glowing screen. It was as if she were watching a movie from a distance, a beckoning scene both familiar and unknown, the colors more vivid as she grew closer. She was nearly there, could see the colors turning into shapes, her path unfurling between them. There it was, had always been, another world, a promise kept. More than anything she wanted to tell Bernie, to let her know about this lovely place, but she was inside it by then and on her own.

Noel C. Hoffman 27

I hardly knew what I was thinking that night. I had two bottles of wine in me along with a good dinner. I heard people over at my neighbors’. So I woke the dog up and took her for a walk.

The girl neighbor is young. Just younger than me. I was friends with her in high school. Round eyes and very blonde. 27. The guy is older. He seemed nice enough when we bumped into each other on the street while walking our dogs.

It was after midnight, and there I was walking the dog past their house. There were a number of cars parked on the street. All the lights were on in the house.

There was lots of splashing and noise to be heard from the pool in their backyard. I turned around and walked past the house again, got back to my driveway, turned around again and walked past the new neighbors’ house again. Then, with the dog, I walked up to their front door and knocked.

Nobody let me in. The door just opened. The interior of the house was under renovation. People had been smoking inside. Tad, my new neighbor, appeared and unclipped my dog from her leash. She ran to the backyard. Tad handed me a beer.

“It’s all fenced in outside,” he said. He was quite red in the face and enthusiastic. “Let me show you the pool!”

Surprisingly, I knew all the people there. They were all older brothers and sisters of my friends from high school. My friends all left after college. I stood in the back corner, by the pool shed, and drank my beer amongst some milky patio furniture with Mallory, the older sister of my friend, whose physical body is in Pine Hill Cemetery.

I set my beer can down on the concrete. Mallory kicked the can in the pool with a smile. The blue can bobbed. Davis talked to me about my friend, his younger brother, and how well he was doing teaching college. Davis laughed, and I all heard was my friend’s laugh. The dog came back by and I put the leash back on her. We went inside.

I took someone’s glass of wine from the kitchen counter and began drinking it. Tad came in and started talking about all of the remodeling they had been doing. There were wires hanging from the ceiling and torn wallpaper on the floor. I congratulated him on their engagement.

I walked back outside. Mikey was in the pool, smoking a cigarette. He told me he now owns his family’s used car lot out on the highway. I wanted to tell him that I bought my first car at his lot from his younger sister. How inside, after she’d flick cigarette ashes in the whirling air, it smelled something beautiful like tonight. Chlorine or windex, your smoke or hers, perfume or cream.

I had a feeling of wanting to jump in the pool with all of my clothes on. No, I was going to take my shirt off and dive in with hardly a splash. Brent Plainfield was talking to me. I went out with his younger sister for a moment in college. I don’t think he knows that. He was telling me that, at 35, he was thinking about going to college. I said that that was a beautiful idea.

I must have had another beer with Mallory. From years of coping, she had gotten pale and shaky like her brother had been. It was getting very late. I was unsteady on my feet. When I walked back in the house, Tad was asleep in a chair. A show on flipping houses was coming out of the muted television. Brent and Davis were smoking from a glass pipe on the couch. Two girls whose faces I remember were snuggling in a chair. They both were smiling at me. I walked into the kitchen and took someone else’s glass of wine.

I was thinking about running. I go running in the neighborhood nearly every day. I wondered if there were women in their houses that looked at me running through their windows. I love to sweat. I run until I sweat through my shirt, and then I walk back home. I walk past Tad and Teresa’s here. Teresa’s little terrier barks at me through the window. I glance quickly inside the window and then keep on home for a shower.

Then Teresa came into the kitchen.

“I ought to start taking Tad on runs with me,” I said.

“Oh, yes, please take him!” Teresa said. She had been swimming in the pool.

Her blonde hair was pulled back, and she had on a large t-shirt that was wet in spots over her breasts.

“I’ll get him that honeymoon body you deserve,” I said. Teresa laughed.

I apologized for coming over so late.

“Oh, no! I told you to come by for a beer whenever, and tonight you finally did!” Teresa said.

I took a sip of wine and nodded. We talked for some time and then Teresa said that she had to put Tad to bed.

I walked back outside. No one was by the pool anymore. I looked at the pool, the color of an overfilled balloon. The dog licked my hand. I took my shirt off and threw it over the fence. I lay down on the scratchy concrete. Then I rolled into the pool with only my hand above the water, holding the leash. When I came up, Teresa was standing over me, up-lit. She wasn’t wearing a t-shirt anymore. Just her black bikini. She unclipped the dog from her leash. The dog ran off somewhere.

“Can I come in?” she asked me.

Sarah Wilkinson Dream Walker

I don’t dare move. Wooden shelves surround me, stuffed to the brim with blurry shapes of items for sale. A deer-antler chandelier hangs from woodbeam ceilings, sunlight reflecting back at me from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Pumpkin and linen scents compete, making my nose sting and eyes water. I squint, trying to make out the face of the cashier, but can’t even tell if it’s a man or woman. I try to move closer, but can’t. Like something is holding me back.

Then I see her. The sudden urge to be near her makes my legs buzz. I dodge past fuzzy displays of candles and something shaped like plastic pumpkins. I’m right behind her dark hair, brushing the top of her khaki skirt and purple striped leggings. She’s so clear, almost glowing against the blur around her. I can smell her cotton candy perfume and when she turns around, her green eyes make me jump back: they’re the same eyes I see every morning when I wake up. But everything else about her face is different, no lines, no makeup. She’s young, thirteen maybe.

“Allison?” I ask her.

She looks right through me. I turn around to find her little sister, Marnie.

“Caity’s boyfriend just asked me out,” Marnie says, not bothering to keep her voice quiet. “Should I say yes?” Her eyes bulge, smile stretching wide in search of approval.

Allison looks at her with eyes of steel. I flinch, but it’s different from the disappointed looks she gives me. Softer somehow. “Marnie,” she says, “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just ask me that. I’m going next door. Tell Mom.”

With that she marches out of the wide-open glass doors, arms crossed into the soft morning. The wind is just rousing, sending the freshly fallen orange and yellow leaves swirling in games of cat and mouse across the empty road. Even the sidewalks have character, crooked and green, like spinach teeth stretching into a goofy, welcoming smile. I feel myself being pulled along behind Allison by something that feels like strong wind. It doesn’t hurt; I’m not sure anything in this quaint pedestrian town of boutiques, B&Bs, and coffee shops could hurt us.

Allison walks up the sidewalk of the next store, “Trefilda’s Pretties.” The wood siding is painted a faded gray and the heavy, crooked door creaks as she pushes it open with her shoulder. I stay close behind Allison, wanting to feel the aura of childhood sweeping like a veil behind her. A woman dressed like a witch with stringy black hair, a hooked nose, and tattered robes of black looks up from her cash stand. Her face is clear, unlike any of the other strangers I’ve seen.

“Can I help you find something Pretty?” The witch asks.

“Um,” Allison chirps, “No, thanks.” She ducks behind a display of coins so she doesn’t have to look at the woman.

“Those are real.”

Allison jumps, her hands reaching up to clutch her chest. “You scared me,” she says.

The witch ignores her. “Have you seen these necklaces?” she asks, gesturing toward a display across the dimly lit store.

“No,” Allison says, following her across the old, gray-wood floors. She’s uncomfortable. I reach out to touch her shoulders, but there’s nothing to grab.

Allison scans the jewelry hung up on tree-shaped holders and adorned to mannequin necklines. She points to an emerald green necklace with a stone the

size of an almond. “This one,” she says, grabbing it from the row on top of the glass case.

“Oh yes, one of my favorites,” the witch croons, studying Allison with colorless cauldron eyes. “$35.”

“Oh,” Allison says, hitting the fast of her coin purse. After recounting her money, she says, “I only have $13.”

“Too bad,” the witch says, putting the necklace back on the case before crossing her arms, stewing eyes slit into daggers.

“Okay,” Allison says, turning for the door, her voice too high. “Thanks anyway.” Her steps are hurried, cluttered like the shelves of the store filled with masks and broaches and Broadway hats.

“Wait,” the witch says, her smile straining now. “$13 will do.”

Allison reaches for the money and makes a quick exchange. She takes her necklace and pushes the heavy door open. It closes with a slumph behind us.

She walks back towards the other store with its cloud of artificial pumpkin, stopping outside the door to lift her face to the mid-October sun. She pushes her hair aside and spreads the necklace across her chest, fixing it behind her neck. She fingers it, the emerald stone shining in the sunlight. I walk up close and look into her clear eyes. The aura around her is darker, heavier, and I back away a few steps. Her veil has been lifted.

Allison shifts in our bed and I open my eyes to the early morning light laid like a chess board against the white carpet. I reach over with my hand to sweep the brown wisps of hair away from her closed eyes, but I can’t touch her. No matter how hard I press, something pushes my hand back from her. My hand

stinging as if bitten by cold, I lay there for hours until Allison’s alarm sounds, my head spinning.

“Ian?” Allison asks, twirling spaghetti onto her fork. “Did you hear me?”

I push myself up in my (fake) velvet chair so I’m not slumping over my plate.

I grab my fork and move some pasta around, thin and wet and rubbery. “Uh, no.

Sorry.” I don’t look at her. The open air kitchen and dining room suddenly feels too small.

“Something happen today?” Her tone, falsely concerned, rubs me the wrong way. I flinch, like she’s thrown her knife at me.

“No,” I say to my plate.

“You’re not eating.”

“How astute of you,” I say through clenched teeth. My anger is overwhelming and I can’t explain it. That makes me madder.

“Look, did I do something?” Allison asks, pushing her chair back from the other end of the glass table. She comes up behind me and puts her arms around my neck. Her cheek rests against my ear and she smells like gardenias.

“No,” I say, trying to be calm. I feel my hands shaking.

“Are you sure? You’re shaking. Did something happen?” She takes her arms from around me and pulls my chin up from my chest, making me look at her.

Her frown stretches, pulling at her eyes.

“No, nothing happened. Just a weird day.” I push her hand away and scoop a messy fork full of spaghetti into my mouth. I don’t mention the dream because it felt like more than that: I think I was inside her memory. Even if I wanted to tell her, the words aren’t coming, like something is clamping my tongue.

“Okay,” she says, nodding to herself as she walks back over to her plate. “We all have weird days. As long as you’re not having second thoughts.” She says that last part quieter, not looking at me.

“No!” I slam my hands on the table, sending my fork clattering to the laminate floor. Allison looks at me, stunned and silent. Her green eyes reflect the light coming in from the glass doors behind me.

“No,” I say again, pushing my plate away. “I’m not having second thoughts.”

Allison starts breathing again and twirls more spaghetti around her fork, real silver, a gift from her mother. She looks up at me and smiles, her skin as smooth and young as it was in the dream.

“Good,” she says, “I sent out the wedding invitations today.”

I see Allison. She’s older now, maybe seventeen. The field is the wind’s playground and it tries to lift her flowery dress, but she pushes it back down and keeps walking.

All around, people dart past trying to get a look at the pig races, the goats and chickens and bunnies and the hayride. Piles of pumpkins crowd the yellowing grass, dead from the endless hordes of stomping feet. The sky is blue and cloudless and warm, and the sun tints everything a happy orange. Even the scarecrows smile with buttoned dimples.

Allison walks behind her mother and sister. They’re with friends, it looks like, but no one she still talks to. I don’t recognize the man, about fifty, or his wife.

Their two kids run in clumsy circles around them, their shoelaces untied and dragging like tattered capes behind them.

I feel the pull again, around the backs of my knees, yanking me forward to Allison. Nobody looks at me, and I can’t tell anyone apart, except Allison’s group

– everyone else is blurry again, their features faceless and indefinite. From what I see, everyone wears jeans and sweaters, hoping that if they look the part of fall, suddenly it will be.

When I get close to Allison, I can smell her shampoo – coconut, like she uses now. I want to bury my face in it like I do sometimes when she pouts or rests her head against my chest on the sofa. I don’t, though, because she takes a sudden turn towards the parking lot. No one notices her leave. She goes out the gate and hurries across the gravel until she reaches a silver Nissan Altima. She stands between it and a green Ford F150, waiting in the shade. She crosses her arms, and uncrosses them. She rocks onto her heels, her hands clasped in front of her, and then behind her. She’s waiting for someone.

Then I see him, the husband. His silvery hair reflects the sun and he walks quickly, but not like he’s heading towards trouble. He’s remarkably calm, his average features twisting into an excited smile like every other dad walking around. Only I see the difference. It’s in his pants, a slight bulge. They’ve done this before.

He reaches the Altima, slipping beside it, unlocking the door. Allison ducks into the back seat, and he follows. I edge closer to the window and see them kissing. His hand is between her legs.

Clouds creep in out of nowhere, like they know. The sun is gone, and the pumpkin patch looks like a cheap fun park abandoned in an empty lot, rotting pumpkins scattered everywhere. The sounds of people leaving are muffled; all I hear are Allison’s gasps.

When the rain falls, I welcome the distraction. It feels cool against my cheeks as I sit beside the car and try not to think about what I’ve seen. She never told me about him. She said I was her first.

I stand up after the gasps subside. Allison and the man are holding each other. She straddles him, his face buried in her chest. Her eyes stare off in my direction, unseeing. Guilt has crept in with the shadows. She fingers her green emerald necklace, the one from Trefilda’s Pretties.

“What are you doing?” I hear the broken tone, like a balloon losing its air, before the words. Sensible shoes on tired feet are resting beside mine. It’s his wife.

She smacks the window with her fist, getting their attention. The wife shoos the children away, back to the pumpkin patch. Her anger is visible: fingernails that dig into her hips, lips puckered against sour words. The wrinkles around her eyes seem to grow wider.

Allison struggles to pull her dress down while the man stares out the window, away from his wife. His penis lies limp and chastised on the seat in front of him. Someone faraway is screaming. It makes the hairs on my neck rise, my throat sear.

Not even the thunder can silence the screams.

“Ian! Ian!” Allison yells. I feel her hands pressing down on my shoulders. I can’t stop thrashing. “Ian! What’s wrong?!”

I can’t find words, I can’t even tell if I’m awake or asleep. And that screaming; I still hear it.

“Ian!” she yells, “Stop screaming! Ian!” My eyes jolt open. “Screaming?” I ask, calm spreading through my limbs.

Allison releases my shoulders, sitting back on her pillows. She looks at me like I’ve slapped her. “Screaming?” I ask again.

She doesn’t say anything for a long time, and her eyes fall from my sweaty face to the disheveled red wine-colored comforter at her feet. “You were screaming,” she says, to no one.

“Oh,” I say, as a way of explaining.

“You were having a bad dream.” She looks up at me, her worried eyes draining of their color. “Goodnight,” she says, as if nothing happened, rolling away from me onto her side. Her breathing softens after a while and I’m on my own.

I lay there, staring at the smooth ceiling until sunlight starts to fill the room. I think about his hands between her legs, the way she gasped like she never does when I touch her. I picture the wife’s face and the screaming that never seemed to stop. My own screams. How did I not know I was screaming? I think about the necklace Allison was wearing. I wonder where it is now.

When the alarm clock goes off, Allison rolls out of bed without waking me. I’d fallen asleep sometime in the early morning, and my body is heavy and sore. I can barely push the covers off of me, and after I do, I’m breathing hard and I have to rest before I can try to swing my legs off to the floor. It takes me as long to stand up, unsteady on my feet, as it does for Allison to shower and dress. She appears from the bathroom with a robe of steam following at her heels. She wears her “I mean business” dress, the black one with the thigh slit, tight fitting and satin. She wears no bra and I can see everything: the curve of her hips, the line of her thong, the ride of her breasts. Her dark hair is flipped out at the ends, framing her green eyes. I feel my penis get hard. She sees it and walks toward me, swinging her hips like a pussycat.

“I see you’ve made a recovery,” she purrs, rubbing me through my flannel pajama bottoms.

“I, uh,” I say, feeling woozy, nearly falling back onto the bed with a light head, “I.” Allison stops, standing up. That’s when I see it. “You are okay, aren’t you?”

I point to her chest. “Where’d that come from?”

“This?” she asks, fingering the emerald necklace. “I got it when I was young.

While my family and I were visiting Brown County.”

Somewhere outside myself, I nod, now certain that I’ve been drifting through her memories at night. “Why are you wearing it?” I hear myself ask.

“I found it at the bottom of my jewelry box,” she says. “Don’t you like it?” Her brows are tinged with the same detached worry I saw last night right before she turned over and fell asleep.

“Uh,” I say, trying to push past her to the bathroom. My legs aren’t working, and I trip into her arms. When she sees my mouth fill, she lets me drop to the ground and backs away in disgust. She fingers her emerald necklace.

I vomit all over the floor, an unending stream of puce liquid that stains the white carpet. I hear Allison’s footsteps stomping down the stairs, and I hope she’ll bring me a glass of water. I wait, staring at the burgundy walls and the weaved-wood headboard, thinking about how she didn’t ask for my opinion before choosing either of them.

I hear the front door slam, the start of an engine. I imagine I’m settling with the dust that falls in the wake of her tires. I don’t move for hours, waiting for that glass of water, and the woman I fell in love with to love me in return.

She doesn’t come home when the sun sets, or even when I see the stars, dull through the swatch of glass between the two ivory curtains. I pry myself off the floor and crawl into the bathroom. I use the sink to pull my heavy, useless body up. My legs are numb and it feels like I’m stepping on frozen nails, but I make myself stand. I splash cold tap water on my face and let it dribble down the front of my Oktober Fest 2012 t-shirt. I yank it over my head and throw the shirt, stained with dried vomit, in a pile at my feet. My hands search through the cabinets for the bleach, and when I find it, I pour the whole bottle on the carpet.

I don’t wipe it up; I just let the fumes clear my mind.

I wait for Allison until eleven. When I can’t keep my eyes open anymore, I crawl to the bed and lift my tired body into it and sleep, shutting out whatever dreams come to haunt me.

I wake to the smell of French press coffee and the clink of pots and pans, the running of tap water, the sizzle of eggs frying. I rouse myself from bed and try not to fall as I descend the stairs. Allison is poking at the eggs in the stainless steel pan, dressed in a hounds tooth skirt and a green blouse, the necklace resting in its deep V neckline. Eyes lined in black. She looks ready to de-throne Hilary Clinton.

“Why didn’t you come home to me?” I ask, my voice cracking with a dry whine that I hate myself for.

“I did,” she says.

“When? I waited until eleven.”

“I had a meeting until ten in Hampshire. Took a while to get home.” She doesn’t look up from the pan of eggs.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, my arms limp at my sides. My legs are feeling wobbly again.

“It will be.” She shoots me a furtive smile, flipping the eggs onto a Tiffany plate. She crosses the kitchen and hands it to me, kissing me on the cheek.

“Sorry I left when you got sick. You know I don’t do puke. Are you okay?” She stands looking up at me with big green eyes brought out by the emerald necklace and the olive tile backsplash behind her.

“Why do you keep wearing that necklace?”

Her brows lower as she fingers the necklace, her tone slick and bitter as cooled grease. “I like it.”

I feel the force like wind pushing me towards her and I fight it just enough to pull her fingers away from the necklace. I take her hands in mine, the wind retreating in my ears. I teeter back on my heels, the force no longer pushing me forward, and nearly fall into her. “I don’t think I like it.”

Allison looks at me with eyes like swords. She walks out of the kitchen, the tinkle of car keys and the heels of her black boots filling the hall, the front door slamming behind her.

For the next two days, Allison wears the necklace day and night, in the shower, when we have sex, disjointed and off-rhythm. Unsatisfying. I blame the necklace, but don’t say anything.

Fear of the dreams keep me from sleeping. I stare at the ceiling from the edge of the mattress, far away from Allison’s sleeping body, naked, save for the necklace. Two nights, I do that. Two days, I brush my teeth with shampoo and bake the dish towels instead of the pizza thawing on the counter. Allison

doesn’t say a word, like we’re in a silent war and the first person to acknowledge the other loses. Allison is pro at this game; I’m too tired to care.

On the third night, I lay down and kiss her cheek wordlessly, turning over and surrendering, not to her, but to the inevitability of sleep.

Allison crouches on top of her pillows, as far away from the man as she can be. She’s naked and he’s not. Her legs are crossed to form a shield in front of her. One arm holds up her reclining body. The other fingers the emerald necklace at her throat.

I hear the man’s voice crack. He says, almost too quietly to hear, “This is how the dream tonight started. The dream where I hurt you.”

Allison’s eyes widen and in the next moment the man springs. He’s on top of her and she’s flailing her arms, trying to push back on his throat as his grip tightens around hers.

“Hey!” I yell, running from where I stand a few feet back. “Get off her!” I jump on the bed and claw at his back, but my hands bounce off without leaving a scratch. His fists start to swing and connect to her jaw. Her screams pierce me and I feel helpless, like the walls are closing in. Hot. It’s too hot in here.

I try again, “STOP! You’re hurting her!” I grab him by the shoulders and pull back so hard I topple off the side of the bed. I stand up and run at him, kicking and screaming and throwing punches and slapping and biting.

“Ian!” I hear, but it’s faraway. I think it’s Allison yelling for me to help her.

“I’m coming Allison!” I yell and kick harder. The man keeps beating and I see blood on the pillows.

“Ian,” the voice screams again and it’s getting louder. I feel hands pushing on my shoulders and I resist.

“Allison! Keep fighting!”

“Ian!” I feel a slap ripple across my cheek and I throw my eyes open. My arms and legs are still flailing and I’m lying in a pool of my own sweat.

“Ian!” Allison yells again. “What the hell is wrong with you?!” I see her lip is bleeding, but that’s the only sign of damage: it must have been a dream. I reach out to touch it. She recoils to her side of the bed.

“Sorry,” I say, panting. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and touch my cheek where she laid it on me, hard. No blood.

“What the hell has been going on with you?” she demands. I don’t see a way out.

“Look,” I say. “It’s that goddam necklace.”

“What?” she asks, reaching for it.

“DON’T” I yell, “touch it! Don’t touch it.”

Her hand stops and she lets it fall to her breast. She clutches the sheet around her naked body, like she’s only just realized how vulnerable she is. “Why?” she asks, her voice quiet now. She looks skeptical.

“It started with that necklace. The dreams,” I explain.

“What dreams?” she yells, anger crowding her cheeks. “Quit being so goddamn cryptic and fucking tell me what’s going on!”

“Dreams,” I say again, still trying to catch my breath. “I’ve been having dreams. They’re your memories, I think. That’s the only explanation I have. I can see the places and people you’re with so clearly,” I take another breath, “even though I’ve never gone there or met them.”

“What do you mean?” she says, her voice high. She seems small.

“Dreams,” I say. “You were in some small town in Indiana, I think. Trefilda’s Pretties. You bought that goddamned necklace,” I say, pointing at her throat.

Her fingers reach up to touch it again, the sheet falling back down. “DON’T TOUCH IT!” I yell. She snatches her hand back and holds it in her other, rubbing it.

“Sorry,” I say again, heaving myself up onto my pillows so I’m sitting.

“But I never told you about Trefilda’s Pretties,” she says. “How’d you know?”

I shrug, “It gets worse.”

Her eyes grow big and buggy in her face. “What?” she asks, turning her head away from me, afraid of the answer.

“You were at a pumpkin patch,” I say. “You slept with a married man. You never told me.” The words hang between us. Neither of us reaches for them. I feel anger prickle along the knobs of my spine, but I exhale and let it dissipate with the accusation.

Allison leans back onto the pillow with one arm, looking at me out of the corner of her sheepish eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about that,” she says. “I thought you wouldn’t love me if you knew.” She stops for a moment and looks me in the eye again. “Wait, how do you know?” Her fingers reach up to the emerald necklace, rubbing it like a crystal ball. Her legs cross in front of her.

I feel my throat crack, fear spreading like a black-out blanket across my gut.

“This is how the dream tonight started,” I say. “The dream where I hurt you.”

Allison’s eyes grow wide and I feel a force pushing me towards her and I resist, pushing my body back into the pillows but I’m not strong enough and I’m flying towards Allison and my hands are gripping her neck squeezing the air out and her arms and legs are flailing, pushing against my throat but I barely feel her and my hands form fists and start hitting, punching, making a terrible bone-grinding sound against her jaw but I keep hitting until blood spatters the white pillows and she’s not screaming anymore, her head lolling back on the

pillows. I beg myself to stop, beg my fists to hit me instead but they won’t listen.

The force is pushing me on her. I make a harried grab at the necklace, and rip it off. It flies to the floor and the force retreats, a train whistle fading as it gets farther and farther away until everything is silent. I feel nothing except the pain in my fists. I hear nothing but my own heartbeat and Allison’s bloody breathing growing steadier. She’s coming to.

I roll off the side of the bed and feel around on the floor for the necklace.

When I find it I grip it in my hands and run to the bathroom. I find a hammer on the back of the toilet that’s been there for months, still waiting for me to hang the goddamn sailboat picture Allison just had to have, and swing at the necklace until it’s nothing but shattered glass and wisps of broken amber. I collect all the pieces I can and flush them down the toilet, watching to make sure they make it down and listen as the toilet refills itself, knowing the necklace is getting farther and farther away with every throbbing pulse in my temple.

I go back and find Allison trying to stand up. Blood and swelling flesh makes her almost unrecognizable. Except her eyes, green and shining right through me, like she’s already somewhere else and her body is just trying to catch up. I reach for her face, a gentle touch but she swats me down and punches me square in the jaw, making me stumble. She runs from the room and I hear her tumbling down the stairs, the slamming of the door, the low rumble of her engine turning over. I hear her tires squeal in reverse, gravel flying. I hear her switch gears and floor it. I hear the dust settle, and I collapse on the bed, laying in her blood spatter. The blood that I spilled and will never be able to un-spill.

I turn over, void of any sadness. It all went down with the swirling water in the toilet bowl, the emerald and amber flecks winking at me like they’d done me a favor. Disappearing, water refilling the empty bowl. Her fist on my jaw.

Closing my eyes, I wait for sirens, for feet pounding up the stairs and the shouts that will surely come. I clench the sheets that still smell like gardenias in my hands and wonder what she’s going to do about those goddamn wedding invitations she already sent out.

Erren Geraud Kelly Coffeehouse Poem #88

she appears in the coffeehouse wearing a fedora dressed in gypsy clothes another one of annie hall's offspring? or the ghost of anais nin searching for stories along beverly drive

Gloria Panzera Snowfall Hush

It was fitting that the day we buried her the snow fell with a silent, beautiful violence. Unlike rain, snow falls quietly. It builds and builds, leaving a white shroud. Not unlike my mother, the hush of a snowfall has a holy presence. It can be imprinted. It should be photographed. After two days of a Catholic-Italian viewing, two days, twice a day, of receiving lines, two days of enduring beautiful stories about my mother who was “too young” and “too good” and all of it was true, and “she was a saint” and “fuck, why do bad things happen to good people,” I placed a copy of Frankenstein in her casket and watched as they closed it.

I forced myself to look.

It is unnatural to watch the body of your mother descend into its casket. It is uncomfortable. It is disturbing. Still, I watched as a man from the funeral home entered with a crank. He turned it with a little too much energy. As he forced the crank to turn, my mother’s body descended into the casket.

I forced myself to watch.

Years before, when my grandfather died, I didn’t watch. I started to watch, but as they lowered his body into his casket, I let out a guttural cry—an animal sound—that civilized humans don’t make. My mother, who I was now watching being lowered, grabbed me and put my face into her chest.

I didn’t watch again two years later when my grandmother died. What the hell was the point? It was a terrible thing. Can’t we all just go on living—never watching, never seeing?

When they lowered my mother, I couldn’t help but watch. I knew she wasn’t going to suddenly open her sharp, dark eyes and say something corny. But I wanted her to. I watched, this time in silence, a tear—maybe two—slid down my face. No crying. I held it all in.

From the moment they opened the casket for the eternal viewing, we all kept saying, “that’s not her.” That body looked nothing like my mother. The family kept saying, “They did a great job with her makeup,” but they hadn’t; she looked nothing like herself. What the hell picture had they provided to the funeral home? This detail had not been left to me. I had chosen the casket, her clothes, and the rosary she’d be buried with. The picture for the makeup artist wasn’t my job. Regardless, the cancer had totally eviscerated her body. She looked old.

Her hair had been styled like a matronly nanny. The suit she wore was too big in the shoulders, aging her further. Her olive skin, now yellow. When her mother had died 28 years before, almost to the day, I was told she looked beautiful in her casket. The same could not be said for my mother.

My grandmother had died from that same stupid cancer shit.

Fucking cancer. A refrain that I can’t help but whisper whenever anyone: a friend, co-worker, news anchor, stranger mentions knowing a victim. I say it quietly enough not to offend, but loud enough that I hope my anger pushes its way through the universe as the words find it and slowly snakes its way into cancer, eating it alive as it does its victims.

Fucking cancer.

My grandmother’s brain had been abducted by it.

Fucking cancer.

Her once beautiful face looked swollen, she’d lost the ability to be expressive, and after being treated as a guinea pig by the research hospital thanks to

numerous surgeries, blind. But, after she whispered her last words, inhaled her final breath, the story went that she looked stunning. All the swelling went down, her face was at peace.

And maybe that’s what I’m supposed to tell my son when I try to immortalize my mother. I won’t tell him that the cancer growing on her stomach had made it impossible for her to eat, which made her already small frame even smaller. I won’t tell him about how her once brilliant, black hair, grew back coarse and gray. I won’t tell him that the tumor growing inside her had gotten so large that she looked like a pregnant cancer patient. That she was wearing maternity clothes when she took her last breath. Maternity clothes that were still on sale at Target when I became pregnant with him. I couldn’t even shop for maternity clothes without thinking about how God was a bit of a douche, taking a life only to anchor one to me. The whole concept of life being cyclical didn't fall flat with me. It had a resounding, literal voice.

Perhaps I’ll skip all that crap. I won’t talk about any of it. Instead, I’ll talk about the snow. How it fell quietly. I’ll tell him about much my mother enjoyed silence. I’ll tell the story of how as she gasped for air at 4:30 in the morning, my dad and sister and I were telling her over and over again to just let go. For a brief moment she made eye contact with me, and I could tell she just wanted us to shut up. She wanted us to zip it. She wanted us to stop. the. talking. How when I suggested we be quiet, it was only moments later that she closed her eyes and left. It was in that snowfall quiet that she required—that she relished—when she let go. I’ll tell him about that. I’ll tell him about how the week my maternity leave was up the snow fell hard in our city and the schools shut down, extending my stay with him for just a few more days. How, clearly,

the snow was this spectacular magic force. It should be imprinted. It should be photographed. It should make us hush.

Contributors

Cedric Chambers Cedric Chambers was born on June 16, 1990 he lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He is a professional photographer and a prolific painter. Chambers primarily paints with oil paint and draws inspiration from his environment.

His portfolio includes over 200 paintings in styles from photo realism to abstract expressionism. His father gave him the name Cedric so he wouldn’t have to pick a pseudonym. His grandfather was a concert violinist who played a stradivarius. His mother is a Bolivian fashion designer who let him participate in hispanic cultural festivals and parades.

Noel C. Hoffman Noel C. Hoffman is a Canadian raised in Alabama. He holds a B.A. in International Trade from Auburn University and an M.B.A. from the University of New Orleans. He is a fiction editor with Kudzu House Quarterly, works with Gigantic Magazine out of Brooklyn, and cofounded and coedits the writing community, www.simmr.org. His work can be found in Fiction Southeast, Newfound, The Monarch Review, and The Kudzu Review. Contact him through www.noelcoblickhoffman.com.

Erren Geraud Kelly Erren Geraud Kelly’s work has been published in numerous print and online publications. He recieved his B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Erren lives in L.A. Gloria Panzera Gloria Panzera’s work as has appeared in The Inquisitive Eater and One Forty Fiction, among others. She is also the co-founder and co-editor of Rum Punch Press, an online literary magazine. She teaches English and Creative Writing in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and son.

Michael Passafiume Michael Passafiume recently relocated from Brooklyn, NY to Southern California, where he spends the bulk of his time attempting, in vain, to avoid the sun. His work has appeared in Black Heart Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, MadHat Lit, Meat for Tea and Rust + Moth, among others. His chapbook, “archipelagos,” was recently published by Blue Hour Press.

Jean Ryan Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Napa, California. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, “Lost Sister.” Her debut collection of short stories, “Survival Skills,” was published in April 2013

by Ashland Creek Press and was short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award.

Michael Washburn Michael is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. He studied literature and history at Grinnell College and the University of Wisconsin. Michael’s fiction has appeared in Rosebud, The Bryant Literary Review, The New Orphic Review, Raven Chronicles, Stand, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Prick of the Spindle, and other publications.

Sarah Wilkinson Sarah Wilkinson studies at Champlain College in the undergraduate Professional Writing program. She’s been published in several magazines, some of which include Atticus Review, Amarillo Bay, and Bangalore Review. She’s a Nonfiction Editor forHalfway Down the Stairs and an advocate for those, like herself, who suffer from Interstitial Cystitis.

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